


Silver And Gold

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 14:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11557179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: The Doctor reflects on the fragility of human lifespans and the delicate nature of the human mind, via the case study of one Clara Oswald.





	Silver And Gold

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so I'm not gonna lie, I've umm-ed and err-ed about posting this for ages because it was written during a particularly crappy period of my life, but I eventually decided to bite the bullet, so here it is. Hoping this might be cathartic, or something.
> 
> The title comes from the Lorde song "Yellow Flicker Beat."
> 
> Major warnings for discussions of suicide and mental health issues.

He’s seen it before of course. Spend enough time on Earth and eventually you’ll meet a human who’s unwilling to continue facing the daily struggle, and intends to find a better life beyond the veil. First you’ll find one, then another, and another, and another, until you’re drowning in a flood of unfortunates who can’t see the point of welcoming another sunrise, the darkness that consumes their minds emanating from them in a wave of hopelessness as cloying and thick as fog.

Some of them take their time about it, certainly. They pick a drug and let it transport them to a better place as they wait for the brush of death’s merciful hand to relieve them of the sufferings of the mortal coil, eyes clouded with visions of a world they hadn’t quite had the fortuitousness to see. He’d found them on his travels: rendered silent by the opiates as they lay on street corners and in hovels, decaying before his eyes, withered before death had even welcomed them as its own. He’d found their remains, what was left of those trapped on the fringes of society, alone in poverty and squalor and easy pickings for wary creatures with nowhere else to turn for sustenance. He’d kept a count over the years, but he wouldn’t tell you the number aloud. Couldn’t. To put a number on something so unquantifiable seemed somehow demeaning to the dead themselves, as though it would insinuate that they had all suffered the same traumas and died the same death. So instead he gave them as much respect as he could: called UNIT, if they were an option, or made do by himself if not. Those were the ones that haunted his nightmares – the ones he had tended to with as much funerary pomp and circumstance as he felt able to give, determined to offer them a final sense of humanity and ensure that someone remembered they were once _there_. He carried the weight of them on his shoulders like a mantle, their cold breath on the back of his neck when he tried to sleep, until he found himself seeing them in a macabre parade each time he closed his eyes, and so he would try to direct his attention elsewhere. 

That was a fallacy. 

His attention would, as ever, drift to those who had sought a more rapid demise. Those who had unzipped their veins or leapt from a great height; those who had used rope or gas or pills to seek the perceived solace of death. He’d found the first one quite by chance while investigating the matter of several mysterious disappearances, only to find that the spectre who had claimed this missing person was far more abstractly innate than alien, and wore a face much like the deceased’s own. He’d blanched, of course, and turned away, but not before he’d seen enough to chill him to the core. Later in the TARDIS, he’d tried to understand – tried to make sense of the whole affair and what they had done – but found he couldn’t. He lied to himself – lied often enough to almost render it true – and so when he had found the second, he had been unprepared, and found himself shaken to the core by the deceased. He’d fled back to his TARDIS and wept for humanity, sobbed for the souls of those who felt unable to go on. Howled for the world they would not get to see, and the love they would never get to experience. 

Over the years, of course, he found more of them like the first. Heard tell of many more. Each time he wished that he could’ve been there with a kind word and a hand to hold, but he was not so naïve as to consider himself the curer of all ills. He understood that there were demons even he couldn’t hope to banish, but he still prayed that one day he may be able to save one. One day he may be in the right place – wrong place? – at the right time – wrong time? – and be able to pull someone back from the precipice with a flourish of his screwdriver and gentle platitudes. 

He’d hardened though, over the years. Death became him, and death quailed at the sight of him, but still he didn’t find himself located adjacent to anyone on the brink of their own demise. He didn’t quite have the heart to go hunting for anyone on the edge, afraid that with the sick perversion of his life he might find a loved one too far gone to save and the thought alone scared him almost witless. So, instead he made his feeble excuses, and he continued finding those who he was too late to save, their lives slipping around him like water. An endless black parade of those touched by a dark pallor he was beginning to understand with each passing day, those too disenchanted with the universe to consider giving it a second chance – or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth. 

And then, of course, came _his_ second chance. His second chance _s_ , in the definitive plural form, with thanks to one Clara Oswald. She’d saved him with precious little regard for herself, stepping casually into the maelstrom of his time-stream with little vested concern for her own interests. And as was his modus operandi, he had cursed himself. Cursed love, cursed her, cursed her fragile humanity, and then he had realised that this was one he could save. That this was his chance to make the difference he had so yearned for, and thus he had scooped her into his arms and emerged as heroically triumphant as one can be in the face of a Silurian, a human, a Sontaran, and a decrepit TARDIS. He’d kissed her forehead and nursed her back to health, and in time she repaid the favour. She saved his people. She saved _him,_ implored them to give him a second chance at life; a second chance at righting the wrongs he had seen and attempting to save the humans he now only half-understood. His own darkness had dissipated with her entry into his life, and now he understood their condition all the less, confused as to why they had given up when they could find so _much_ to live for. 

He had changed. His face, his body, his mind. 

He had tried to understand once more, and so he had left her there, left her alone as he quested in search of comprehension and sought to come to terms with everything that happened: the change, the mystery, and her, his saving grace. He had asked the TARDIS to help him in that instant, and she had brought him here: unimaginable squalor on a godforsaken planet, a darkened room lit by a guttering candle and the body of a girl too well-dressed to consider this an abode. He’d recognised her, of course; would recognise her anywhere: warm chestnut hair and a petite stature, curled up in a familiar posture he had seen a thousand times. Thus, he’d called her name with warmth, stepped forward and taken her by the shoulder only to find her cold and lifeless, realising too late his error and her folly. He’d backed away with eyes like saucers, gagging on the stench of death. 

The TARDIS had taken him somewhere quiet after that. A dappled forest that smelled of damp earth and life, birdsong calming his thundering heart. He’d inhaled deeply and sensed the creak of the rope in the silence before his exhale; though he’d raced towards the sound, he arrived too late to be of any solace to the girl. He brushed her shining hair off her face with a shaking hand and recoiled as though bitten by fire. Wide, dark hazel eyes stared back up at him, dulled by lack of oxygen and a darkness he was beginning to understand. 

He’d asked himself _why_ , back in the darkness of his ship. Asked why self-loathing and suffering was so engendered in the consciousness of her echoes that they would feel the need to act as they had. He’d clenched his fists and raged against the very notion of his Clara suffering; materialised in _his_ Clara’s bedroom, as silent as the night that surrounded her, and watched the reassuring rise and fall of her chest as she slumbered, feeling his hearts return to normal and resolving never to broach the issue. 

Instead he’d taken her hand and they’d run, and they’d run, and they’d never looked back, not once. Not until she was looking across the console room at him with hollow eyes he barely recognised, her arms clutched around a form that seemed too acutely angular to be his Clara as she surveyed him with muted surprise, too emotionally exhausted to be able to consider her usual flair for theatrics. He’d still not joined the dots together then, too caught up in the promise of providing relief and watching her almost-smile to be concerned with any other part of her than those eyes – eyes which had known far too much pain for her young life, and eyes that he was determined would not cloud with loss ever again, not if he could help it. 

It wasn’t until later – as he placed his hands over hers on the console and guided her towards the place she needed to be – that he’d noticed her hands. The dark, rusted blood that had seeped into the spiderwebs of her knuckles. The deep, plum-coloured bruises that blossomed across the backs of her hands; hands which trembled under his touch, and he twisted away from her, a profound sense of horror rising in his throat and stilling his hearts. _Fragile human skin_ , he’d told her once, and now he could barely look away from the evidentiary proof, frozen in horror and resolving with silent certainty never to allow her to slip into the darkness again. He understood, in that moment; he understood but he did not wish to, and he prayed to god he would be there to catch her should she fall again. 

And then…

He put his head in his hands, the silence of his own torture chamber filling his ears as he cast his mind back.

She’d been reckless, of course. She’d always been reckless, and somehow that had been part of the appeal of her. She’d been reckless and he had so adored her willingness to take him by the hand and run with him… until it had become a concern. Until she’d begun to take the sort of risks that indicated to him that she was edging back towards the abyss, and he’d tried with all his might to stop her. Tried to halt her in her tracks and remind her what she meant to him; to capitulate to her will regarding the hugging; to allow her to all but live in the TARDIS. He’d tried with every breath he took, but still she had taken that final risk. Still she’d taken the chronolock, in an act of – well, could you term it suicide, if the end result was accidental? He was unsure. His heart ached to think of it, to think of their final moments and the agony of knowing he should’ve stopped her. He had had a duty of care and he had failed to fulfil it, so now here he was: heartbroken, suffering with every breath he drew, guilt-ridden and unable to sleep for the sight of her crumpled form lying on the cobbles. 

But he would fight for her. He would not let her die. Damn the rules and damn the consequences – the universe owed him as much. He would save Clara.

No matter how long it took.


End file.
